| Introduction | |
| Corporal | 1 |
| Elegy | 1 |
| Two Men | 2 |
| A Mighty Runner | 3 |
| Miniver Cheevy | 3 |
| Famous Baths and Bathers | 5 |
| Elegy | 7 |
| Philadelphia | 7 |
| Seattle | 9 |
| Everything In Its Place | 10 |
| On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness | 11 |
| The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet | 12 |
| The Harmonious Heedlessness of Little Boy Blue | 13 |
| The Wrights' Biplane | 16 |
| In Dives' Dive | 16 |
| In a Poem | 16 |
| The song of mehitabel | 17 |
| Archy at the zoo | 20 |
| from mehitabel's extensive past | 22 |
| Ballade of the under side | 24 |
| Factory Windows Are Always Broken | 27 |
| A Colloquial Reply: To Any Newsboy | 27 |
| Niagara | 28 |
| Kalamazoo | 30 |
| Us Potes | 33 |
| Ballade of Schopenhauer's Philosophy | 34 |
| The Rich Man | 35 |
| To a Thesaurus | 35 |
| "Lines Where Beauty Lingers" | 37 |
| An Immorality | 39 |
| Ancient Music | 39 |
| The Naming of Cats | 41 |
| Macavity: The Mystery Cat | 42 |
| Tannhauser | 45 |
| Carmen | 48 |
| Rigoletto | 50 |
| Pelleas and Melisande | 53 |
| Survey of Literature | 56 |
| An Unusual Combination in Verses of This Character | 58 |
| from The Notebook of a Schnook | 61 |
| from Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing | 63 |
| from Songs about Life and Brighter Things Yet; A Survey of the Entire Earthly Panorama, Animal, Vegetable and Mineral, with Appropriate Comment by the Author, of a Philosophic, Whimsical, Humorous or Poetic Nature - a Truly Remarkable Undertaking | 65 |
| The Sexes | 67 |
| Elegy Written in a Country Coal-Bin | 68 |
| "A Pre-Raphaelite" | 69 |
| Upper family | 70 |
| First Fig | 72 |
| Second Fig | 72 |
| Thusday | 72 |
| Grown-Up | 73 |
| Ozymandias Revisited | 74 |
| Eschatology | 74 |
| We Have Been Here Before | 75 |
| "A joker who haunts Monticello" | 76 |
| Flowers of Rhetoric | 76 |
| Ah, To Be In ... | 77 |
| Portrait of the Artist | 79 |
| Chant for Dark Hours | 79 |
| Unfortunate Coincidence | 81 |
| Comment | 81 |
| Words of Comfort to be Scratched on a Mirror | 81 |
| News Item | 81 |
| Song of One of the Girls | 82 |
| Fighting Words | 82 |
| Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom | 83 |
| Experience | 84 |
| Neigher Bloody Nor Bowed | 84 |
| Bohemia | 84 |
| Story | 85 |
| Frustration | 85 |
| Resume | 86 |
| One Perfect Rose | 86 |
| Ballade at Thirty-Five | 87 |
| Healed | 88 |
| Pour Prendre Conge | 89 |
| Coda | 90 |
| The Danger of Writing Defiant Verse | 90 |
| The Actress | 91 |
| "The way to hump a cow" | 92 |
| Obit on Parnassus | 94 |
| Sportif | 96 |
| History of Education | 97 |
| Convalescence | 97 |
| Week End Bid I | 99 |
| Week End Bid II | 99 |
| Lion | 100 |
| Marble-Top | 102 |
| I Paint What I See | 102 |
| Village Revisited | 105 |
| Old Story | 106 |
| Aphrodite Metropolis (III) | 106 |
| Ballad of the Salvation Army | 107 |
| Death and Transfiguration of Fourteenth Street | 108 |
| Cultural Notes | 109 |
| Dirge | 111 |
| Spring Comes to Murray Hill | 113 |
| Watchman, What of the First First Lady? | 114 |
| Please Pass the Biscuit | 115 |
| The Termite | 116 |
| The Panther | 117 |
| A Beginner's Guide to the Ocean | 117 |
| Kind of an Ode to Duty | 118 |
| No Wonder Our Fathers Died | 119 |
| A Necessary Dirge | 121 |
| The Private Dining Room | 122 |
| What's in a Name? Some Letter I Always Forget | 124 |
| Arthur | 125 |
| The Song of Songs | 125 |
| View from a Suburban Window | 128 |
| Trinity Place | 128 |
| Why, Some of My Best Friends Are Women | 129 |
| Evening Musicale | 131 |
| Blues for a Melodeon | 132 |
| New England Pilgrimage | 133 |
| The Day After Sunday | 137 |
| Mr. Rockefeller's Hat | 139 |
| To Helen | 140 |
| The Princess and the Pea | 140 |
| Ballade of Poetic Material | 141 |
| Under Which Lyre | 143 |
| from Academic Graffiti: "My first name, Wystan" | 150 |
| John Milton | 150 |
| Oscar Wilde | 150 |
| Parable | 150 |
| from Uncoupled Couplets | 151 |
| The Dover Bitch | 152 |
| Handicap | 152 |
| It Never Rains ... | 154 |
| Firmness | 154 |
| From the Grove Press | 155 |
| Down There on a Visit | 155 |
| "From the bathing machine came a din" | 156 |
| "The Proctor buys a pupil ices" | 156 |
| Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams | 157 |
| La Ville de Nice | 158 |
| Above All That? | 159 |
| Neo-Classic | 159 |
| Tomorrows | 160 |
| Japanese Beetles | 162 |
| Said ("J. Alfred Prufrock to") | 166 |
| Said ("Agatha Christie to") | 166 |
| Said ("Dame Edith Evans to") | 167 |
| Said ("J. Edgar Hoover to") | 167 |
| High Renaissance | 168 |
| Working Habits | 168 |
| Boston | 169 |
| On the Antiquity of Warfare | 170 |
| Sources and Acknowledgments | 175 |
| Notes | 181 |
| Index of Poets, Titles, and First Lines | 186 |
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